All I want for Christmas

Revealed... the books that board members of 26 hoped would be putting a bulge in their Christmas stockings.

Jim Davies
‘Margrave Of The Marshes’ by John Peel and (his wife) Sheila Ravenscroft. His death was such a shock. You just assumed he’d be around forever. Of course I’ll always remember him, but here’s a chance to hear his unmistakable voice one more time. And again whenever I feel like it.



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Stuart Delves
I’m not after anything new or shiny; anything current. I’d like a copy of ‘For The Islands I Sing’, George Mackay Brown’s autobiography. By his own admission ‘an uneventful life’ except in the realms of the imagination and the forges of language.



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Martin Hennessey
I can’t remember the last non-business book I read... ‘Managing A Professional Services Firm’ by David Meister is a jolly romp through the literary undergrowth.

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Martin Lee
It’s currently unwritten, but called something like ‘Nottingham Forest’s Triumphant Return To European Glory’. Until events make such a book necessary however, I’ll settle for the new Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Memories Of My Melancholy Whores’. Even in translation, his books are the best prose you can hope to read anywhere.



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Tom Lynham
I have just bought all my Christmas presents to myself – everything I can get my hands on by WG Sebald. He is spookily good. I feel as if we have been following each other around for years. This is sublime storytelling, like he’s perched on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. To feel such a huge connection to a writer on so many different levels, makes me feel incredibly special and lucky to be alive.



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Sarah McCartney
For Christmas I would like to time to read all the lovely books I have waiting for me including both sets of Penguin’s ‘Great Ideas’ (the red ones and the blue ones).



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Tim Rich
‘Politics of Fear’ by Frank Furedi. British politics has bored me for some time. Then I went to a talk by Furedi drawing on the themes from this book. It is a truly remarkable work that is reshaping the way I view our use of language and inspiring me to get politically opinionated again. So good I’d like a second copy, please.



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John Simmons
‘Untold Stories’ by Alan Bennett. I know it will be good. No one writes writes about life with such a distinctively sardonic yet heart-warming sense of humour. A national treasure.



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Neil Taylor
I’m still waiting for Santa to bring me ‘The Book What I Wrote’ by Eddie Braben. Anyone who writes for Morecambe and Wise is a hero in my book (which also makes the perfect Christmas gift, by the way). Apparently it contains all the right words. But not necessarily in the right order.

posted by jim @ 5:22 PM